


this is what you came for

by astroturfwars



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gratuitous Worldbuilding, M/M, Mild to Medium Violence, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, convenient acts of nature, keith is both the best and worst person to get marooned with
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 00:26:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7596175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astroturfwars/pseuds/astroturfwars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keith is bad at making plans. Lance is better than Keith, but there are some things even he can't plan for. </p><p>(In which Lance is marooned, nature is fickle, feelings are hard, and everything is kind of Keith's fault.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is what you came for

**Author's Note:**

> This mostly comes from my love for inconvenient situations, a ridiculous Klance playlist, and my need to finally write a slowburn fic.

“Alright, team.” Shiro’s voice rings inside Lance’s helmet, loud and clear. Behind Lance, a dark shadow against the backdrop of desert, the black lion’s head is held high; Shiro’s tone matches, full of the weary triumph that marks a mission gone right. It makes Lance, tired himself, smile. “It looks like the Galra are taking off. Let’s make sure they’re gone for good and then head back to the castle.” 

“Roger dodger,” says Lance, and snaps off a mock salute for his own satisfaction. To his left, the green lion gives him a flat look before turning back toward their entry point, kicking up dry earth in its wake. Lance gives Blue’s head a good shake to get sand off the windshield, and then takes off after the rest of his team, roaring in arrow formation across the dunes.

The source of their latest distress signal was a planet named Cerebris, about Earth’s size. From space it was mostly hidden beneath a mass of gathering clouds; but beneath that, its surface was a patchwork of tan and gray and white stitched together with green. Strange, Pidge had said when they’d approached it, pushing the green lion a little ahead of the others, that a warm planet like this one would have snow anywhere, let alone so close to the expanse of sands that swept across the land in gentle waves.

They’d landed just south of a thin strip of forest, miles north of the purple sore that marked the Galra camp. Further north yet, on the other side of their impromptu barrier, was Cerebris’ major city—a place whose name Allura pronounced as a series of melodic chirps. 

“Don’t let them get past that forest,” Allura had said as they’d dug the lions’ claws into the sand. “The people of Cerebris are scientists, researchers; they do a lot of work out there. We have to keep them safe.”

“We’re on it.” At the forefront of their formation, the black lion had pawed at the sand. “Let’s go.”

Their first strike on the Galra camp had been quick and efficient. Crowing, Lance had frozen an entire squad of sentries within the first few minutes of battle; not to be outdone, Keith had melted a half dozen ships before they could get off the ground. Hunk had put himself between a group of Galra soldiers and a cluster of what Pidge, hidden with the cloaking device, had determined were the hostages: scientists from the city. With Shiro drawing the bulk of the Galra’s attention elsewhere, Pidge had managed to evacuate the scientists and send them back toward the forest before entering the fray.

All in all, it ended up being a solid mission: they’d knocked out the majority of the Galra forces within an hour, evacuated the hostages, and sustained no major damage to any of the lions. There were few things more satisfying than a good mission, and this time, when Lance voiced that thought, the team agreed.

Except for Keith.

As paladins of the two lions with long-distance weapons, Lance and Keith almost always brought up the rear when team Voltron was headed back to the castle. Lance not seeing Keith in his periphery wasn’t exactly strange, but for him not to respond…

“Keith?” Gone is the weary enthusiasm; now Shiro just sounds concerned. “Keith, come in.”

A familiar grunt comes over the connection. Then: “A couple of the Galra ships turned around. I think they’re headed after the scientists.”

Hunk makes a distressed little noise. “Oh, boy. That’s not good.”

“They’re defenseless.” The faint crackle-and-pop of tinny laser fire tickles Lance’s ears. When Keith speaks again, his voice is tight, strained the way it is when he’s flying hard. “I can take them out.”

Lance’s eye twitches. Typical Keith: going solo, acting all cool, getting all the glory in the aftermath. Times like these Lance is almost sure Keith exists purely to make him look lame.

Well. _Nice try, buddy_ , Lance thinks, _but not today._  

“Blue lion hears your distress call,” he says, grinning, and slows down. Ahead of him, all-too-familiar with what Lance’s tone means, Hunk pauses too. “I’m on my way to provide backup.”

“What?” snaps Keith, whose voice is nearly buried under a “Hold on, Lance,” from Shiro and a resigned “Oh, man,” from Pidge. He sounds irritated, like Lance is infringing upon his _thing_ ; but Lance’s mind is already made up.

“Help is on the way,” Lance says, cocky as he can, and pushes his lion into a tail-over-nose flip that makes Hunk gurgle over the comm line. Space wheels in front of him, stars like diamonds in black velvet—and then it gives way to clouds, then purple-gray sky, then an endless expanse of sand rocketing up to greet him.

Lance pulls up parallel to the ground and dials up the speed, and Blue slices through the dunes like a knife through soft butter, a chrome arrow aiming straight for the blue-and-purple fireworks of battle. He’s coming up on Keith’s right, flanking two of the five Galra ships circling Keith like sharks. The red lion looks a little banged up, but not too much worse for the wear—a much prettier sight than the small Galra contingent, half of whom are already bleeding smoke.

Not a bad job; but Lance could have done that--and he probably would've looked cooler doing it, too.

“Hey, Keith,” Lance sing-songs. Keith growls; Lance, locked on to a nerve, grins. “Ooh, you look like you need a little bit of backup. Leaving that left side open, I see.”

“My left side is _not_ open,” Keith argues, swinging the red lion’s head toward Lance. They glare in frightening sync for a moment—rather, Red glares, and Lance knows exactly the face Keith would be making if he could see it—before a blast of purple hits Red smack dab in its left side, knocking Keith off balance. Lance has approximately two seconds to laugh at Keith’s misfortune before taking a blast to the shoulder; and then the adrenaline kicks in, and his training takes over, and the game is _on_.

“Do you have to say that every time we’re fighting?”

 _Shit_. “Don’t be mad just ‘cause you can’t think of anything cool,” Lance fires back. He lunges at a Galra ship: a near miss. Another one cuts in close, lasers whining; Lance throws Blue into a roll that bares her belly for a terrifying, ungainly moment, but lets him claw the ship out of the sky before it can fire.

That’s one down—no, three, now, one of them dark with claw marks and the other half-melted. The remaining two Galra ships, intent on cutting their losses, streak upward, bound for the endless freedom of space.

A grunt from Keith activates the comm line. “Oh no you don’t,” he says. Red hunkers down to the earth, coiled—and then takes off like a bullet, leaving heatwaves in its wake. He’s a blur of red and silver against the deep purple of the clouds, a ruby nestled in dark lace.

For a split second Lance can feel the weight of his Garrison uniform; the grip-warm controls of the simulator beneath his fingers; the whispers he heard on the day Keith left the Garrison, the ones that said _what a shame_ , the ones that said _he’s the best_.

A stray laser blast explodes in the sand near Blue’s front paw. Lance swears and flings Blue sideways.

Right, right. Galra, fighting, flying, the mission. Lance shakes his head clear, yanks on the thrusters, and takes off after Keith. 

He has to go almost totally vertical to do it, but Lance closes most of the distance between Blue’s nose and Red’s tail after a few seconds of flat-out flying. The pressure pins him to the back of his seat, curls around his chest like a vice-grip; it makes it hard to respond when Keith, dancing nimbly out of the line of fire, prods, “Where’s that backup, Lance?”

He’s a fast flier; somehow that innate skill he’d always had during Garrison training makes him faster than he should be, than his lion should be, than anyone should really be. The Galra lasers are lazy strokes of neon paint in comparison. 

“It’s right here, buddy.” _Asshole_ , Lance thinks, dodging those same laser blasts, and then, as he lays on the thrusters: _two can play that game_. He aims Blue toward the sun, slicing upward through the sky where Keith takes angles and zigzags, aiming to cut the Galra off at the end of what he thinks their next arc of movement might be—and then he sees it. 

The thin rays of light surrounding them mark the last bright spot left on the planet for miles, for hours. There is no sun; there is no light; now there are only clouds, thundering across the sky like an infinite stampede of horses converging on the last remaining glimpse of space, their hooves so loud they pierce the blue lion’s hide and rumble in Lance’s chest, beating in time with the pulse of his heart.

“Shit,” Lance breathes. His stomach sinks. He’s last in line behind the Galra, behind Keith, as they streak upward. The clouds are bleaching out what’s left of the pure black of space, a hungry mouth about to swallow up the only place Lance has known as anything close to home for months. It doesn’t take a fancy calculation for Lance to know he’s cutting it close.

“Lance, Keith, you read me?”

“Shiro,” says Keith, sounding triumphant. Outside the comm line is the high-pitched whine of gunfire; one of the Galra ships falls back into the hands of gravity, spiraling toward the sands. Lance drags his attention from the skies for a second to swerve out of the ship’s smoking path. “We’re bringing one back for the team. All clear.” 

“That’s all well and good, but, uh, you guys need to get out of there, like, ASAP,” Hunk says. He sounds nervous, but not the kind of nervous Lance is used to, not the kind he knows from their Garrison days. This nervousness is the kind of nervous borne from wariness and danger and fear, and it makes Lance’s hair stand on end.

Pidge’s voice breaks over the comm line. “There’s a storm brewing. Allura says this planet has in _cred_ ible electric energy in the atmosphere, so if you don’t—“ 

Her voice crackles—sparkles—dissolves into static. _Shit_ , Lance thinks, _shit, shit, shit_. “Pidge?”

Blue is shaking, rattling Lance to the teeth. Between the wind and the pressure building as he heads for the atmosphere, the trembling is nearly unbearable; Lance hisses out a groan, clinging to the controls like a lifeline. Above him the clouds shift, crackling, going here and there brilliant with electricity thin like thread, mauve and gray and sickly blue but for the one spot of red still on target to break through the last breath of black left in the sky. 

Despite the heat of the cockpit, Lance is cold. His heart jackrabbits in his chest. _Nothing to worry about_ , he tells himself; _even if the storm hits, I’ll be fine. Voltron tech is strong enough to withstand pretty much anything._

_Right?_

Keith slips through the clouds like it’s nothing—and then he’s gone, a faint trail of blue-green energy obscured by the purple-gray of the storm. “C’mon, Lance,” he calls out over the crackling comm line. “Can’t keep up?”

Lance’s heart sticks in his throat. Space is measured in inches now, a single breath of air against the stifling press of clouds. His own breath comes short, and his pulse twitches out of time; adrenaline floods his system, makes him shake all the way down to his bones. Out of all the sticky situations he’d gotten into since joining team Voltron, this was the only one so far that seemed…settled. Fixed. Predetermined.

He swallows the tremor in his voice. “If you fly any slower, you’ll be going backwards.”

The last thing he hears before his comm line fizzles out is the tinny sound of Keith’s laughter; and then his voice a dead end in the echo chamber of his helmet. Lance is alone.

He takes a deep, bracing breath. He’s a fighter pilot, now; he has been for months. If he can fly through mazes of Galra gunfire, he can fly through a storm, no problem. 

Right.

He trusts Blue, he remembers; and he trusts the training that got him this far in the first place. And so, jaw clenched, hands steady, Lance plunges into the storm. 

The part of his brain that’s responsible for getting him into and out of shitty situations whispers a warning. Lance ignores it, pushing after what he thinks is Keith’s tail. The Galra ship is long gone, a faint memory of light on the inside of Lance’s eyelids, and chasing after it will probably only lead him astray; instead, Lance hones his focus to Keith’s path, paring away deliberately at the fear creeping up his spine. Keith wouldn’t just fly blindly into the storm; he must’ve known it would work. Not like he had a plan—Lance knows damn well Keith doesn’t have one of those—but rather an instinct, a sense for where to go. He didn’t trust Keith with plans as far as he could throw him, but with impulses…. 

Lance leans hard on the thrusters. Blue’s engines roar. Around them the sky splits apart, purple-gray marble veined with gleaming lightning. Each stab of it is damn near blinding, and the thunder that follows on its heels is deafening, a cry from a titan whose pitch rises every time time it calls.

Sweat beads at Lance’s temples, prickles cold on the back of his neck. “Guys?” he says, but his voice is lost in the bass of the thunder. The comm line is dead; Lance’s breath catches. “Keith? Anyone?”

Lance’s world is purple and gray and black; Lance’s world is thunder so loud it confuses his heartbeat and lightning as bright as the sun. Lance’s world is Blue, and the storm, and him, alone in the heart of it, as shaky and delicate as the tiny engine of a rabbit’s heart.

Lance is alone; and then, he is not. 

The shock hits Blue first: the lion’s lights flicker inside and out, and the control system goes blindingly bright. Lightning snaps through Blue from claw to nose, and Lance barely has time to shout before it takes him the same way.

He feels it in his toes first, an odd, stabbing numbness, and then as a skipped heartbeat like a missed step, and then as something that his brain can only process as light and energy and pain, filling him up until he’s bursting at the seams, skin searing, the _being-ness_ inside him too much for his skin to hold. He feels like static; he feels like implosions; he feels like _fire_ —

—and then he feels nothing at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
